An ongoing science-society-ethics experiment: The human challenge trial debate in COVID-19 pandemic: The human challenge trial debate in COVID-19 pandemic.

Human challenge trials to deliberately infect volunteers with SARS-CoV-2 should inspire wider debates about research ethics and participants' motivations to take part in such studies.

Views of a non-probability sample of corresponding authors with retracted publications in biomedical fields about the impact of different types of retractions on researchers' careers.

Echoing Arturo Casadevall and Ferric Fang in their Reforming Science: Methodological and Cultural Reforms, "great human enterprises must undergo periodic cycles of self-examination and renewal to maintain their vigor". Especially in the last decade, the research culture has undergone such cycles, partially driven by countercultural transformations that have been reshaping assumptions towards reward-deserving achievements. Addressing retractions is among the challenges in this culture. This work builds upon research carried out at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), which explored the views of 224 reviewers serving on panels for the US National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, among others. We show results of a survey that add to our previous data. It was sent to a population of 1,089 corresponding authors affiliated with institutions from the 20 most productive countries in biomedical fields. We explored how corresponding authors of at least one retracted publication issued between 2013 and 2015 in biomedical journals envisioned the impact of different types of retractions on the careers of the first and corresponding authors. As such impact (if any) is not always immediate, we selected this time frame to ensure that potential respondents would have tangible post-retraction experience.

Retractions and Rewards in Science: An Open Question for Reviewers and Funders.

In recent years, the changing landscape for the conduct and assessment of research and of researchers has increased scrutiny of the reward systems of science. In this context, correcting the research record, including retractions, has gained attention and space in the publication system. One question is the possible influence of retractions on the careers of scientists. It might be assessed, for example, through citation patterns or productivity rates for authors who have had one or more retractions. This is an emerging issue today, with growing discussions in the research community about impact. We have explored the influence of retractions on grant review criteria. Here, we present results of a qualitative study exploring the views of a group of six representatives of funding agencies from different countries and of a follow-up survey of 224 reviewers in the US. These reviewers have served on panels for the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and/or a few other agencies. We collected their perceptions about the influence of self-correction of the literature and of retractions on grant decisions. Our results suggest that correcting the research record, for honest error or misconduct, is perceived as an important mechanism to strengthen the reliability of science, among most respondents. However, retractions and self-correcting the literature at large are not factors influencing grant review, and dealing with retractions in reviewing grants is an open question for funders.

Are female scientists underrepresented in self-retractions for honest error?

Retractions are among the effective measures to strengthen the self-correction of science and the quality of the literature. When it comes to self-retractions for honest errors, exposing one's own failures is not a trivial matter for researchers. However, self-correcting data, results and/or conclusions has increasingly been perceived as a good research practice, although rewarding such practice challenges traditional models of research assessment. In this context, it is timely to investigate who have self-retracted for honest error in terms of country, field, and gender. We show results on these three factors, focusing on gender, as data are scarce on the representation of female scientists in efforts to set the research record straight. We collected 3,822 retraction records, including research articles, review papers, meta-analyses, and letters under the category "error" from the Retraction Watch Database for the 2010-2021 period. We screened the dataset collected for research articles (2,906) and then excluded retractions by publishers, editors, or third parties, and those mentioning any investigation issues. We analyzed the content of each retraction manually to include only those indicating that they were requested by authors and attributed solely to unintended mistakes. We categorized the records according to country, field, and gender, after selecting research articles with a sole corresponding author. Gender was predicted using Genderize, at a 90% probability threshold for the final sample (n = 281). Our results show that female scientists account for 25% of self-retractions for honest error, with the highest share for women affiliated with US institutions.